


i'll pick up these broken pieces till i'm bleeding

by moonsandstar_s



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:19:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4450805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonsandstar_s/pseuds/moonsandstar_s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the battle, everything changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll pick up these broken pieces till i'm bleeding

carmilla's pov.   
carmilla / laura

 

° ° ° 

_there's no religion that could save me  
no matter how long my knees are on the floor   
So keep in mind all the sacrifices I'm making  
to keep you by my side  
to keep you from walking out the door_

\- it will rain, bruno mars 

Her fingers trace over the indentations of scrawled, looping words. There's a dull pounding at the back of her skull, chilling down her neck, tightening a clenching grip around her heart. It's been there, like a wire growing ever-tauter, ever since they stepped out of that towering mountain all those weeks ago: an ever present feeling of wrongness, like something is altered, skewed, _all wrong._

She knows what it is, of course. A battle raged here at Silas, no less than a month ago, give or take a few days. That battle... a chill trickles down her spine. 

The secret she hasn't told- the one that she's kept bottled up, in a stupor of terror, sours on her tongue, corrupt, coiling like so many snakes. She's afraid that when she speaks, everything will come spilling out. 

The Blade of Hastur stripped something away from her. 

She could only sense it dimly when she woke in the dorm. It was a dull, gnawing feeling of something _missing_ , something vital; a part of her that was woven deep, and then ripped out and shattered. Something that made her _her_. Now... Gone.

She isn't exactly sure how she knows. It's similar to a vacant feeling inside her bones, like parts of her were vaporized and replaced with an alien, foreign darkness. Maman had not been right when she said the Blade would consume its wielder, but it did take something from her. 

That something is her immortality.

And she knows she's going to perish soon. She's aging, like s human. She'll burn up, smokeless, a fast borne fire. 

She is still a vampire- nothing could change that- but she is not immortal. It's quite a paradox, and she's an oddity, because what person thinks _"mortal vampire?"_

She wants to laugh, if she wasn't terrified. Immortality was the one thing she hated, but now she's clinging to it like a lifeline- which, she supposes, it is. _Her lifeline,_ now snipped short. It's in the little things that make everything. She's so old, but she's scared- scared of a now certain death. Because she's a monster, but now being forced to confront what didn't matter before- death. 

Outside, the sun is sinking into bloody swathes of golden light, dove-gray clouds feathering across the stars. The moon- pale, translucent in the shimmering passage between day and night- is a watchful eye. As if it's asking, _what will you do?_

All these little things have been here forever: the moon, the stars, the sky. They have been cycling this way since she was born, and they will do so even if- no, _when (because,_ she thinks, _it is certain now_ )- she dies. Once, that was comfort. Now, it is almost sacrilege to think that one day, the moon will wax and wane on a planet that she is gone from. 

Nothing lasts forever: that has been her philosophy for innumerable years, but now it is strikingly real, the gravity of her impending perishment. 

Quiet footsteps catch her hearing. She knows it's Laura; she doesn't move from the couch, still enraptured in the way he heartbeat feels. She'd forgotten what it was like, to feel a pulse, to feel _alive._

 _Monster,_ a savage thought batters against her skull, abruptly killing any euphoria she might have had and embedding itself in her brain. _You freak, you abomination, you half-vampire, with blood still on your hands, how can you judge..._

Laura edges her way out of the room and an invisible hand wraps grueling claws into Carmilla's heart, pain lancing through her as she catches one glimpse of Laura's face, shrouded in shadow as she vanishes behind the green curtains. 

Words rise up on her lips, and she wants to call Laura back and tell her. 

_I never meant to hurt you._

But she is the cause of _all of this._ She's the tormented creature who started this ball rolling in the first place. She shoved it into motion ever since she crawled off the withering battlefield decades ago, ever since she met Ell, ever since she attended that ball that seems like forever ago.

She sits up, and plucks a glass cup of blood from the antique table- unfortunately, blood still is a necessity to survive; that much she has retained- and her fingers dance around the fluted, crystal stem. She drains the glass in seconds, energy thrumming anew through her, and with it, clarity. A rush of unwanted thoughts surge, electric, through her mind, and she growls in frustration. 

She can hear someone pattering around upstairs, and she can hear the cast iron oven beeping, someone thundering up the stairs and the dull din of the campus beyond. All these sounds blur together, and she blocks them out and quietly, very quietly, creeps out of the room. 

Muffled voices provide a concealment as she sidles upstairs, down a swerving corridor, and out a tiny door. 

Then, she is in the solarium, with only the dark by her side.

The night is a vast, vaulting roof that opens up beautifully above her. She sighs as a chilly wind whispers through her hair, caressing her skin before it whisks off. She pads to the edge of the solarium. Dorm rooms jut up like serrated teeth, their light fouling the sky.

It is a cloudless night, and the silver glory of the risen moon blazes forth; only the tiniest sliver of saffron beyond the mountains tells of the falling sun. 

Her eyes pick out constellations- the Big Dipper, Pisces, Orion the Hunter. The stars swim across the sky, bright and searing. Once, they were a reminder of security. Now...

She only feels darkness and fear and painful, painful loneliness.

Her heart pounds as she catches a glimmer of movement to her left. Turning, she sees a shooting star. It goes careening in the dark; it is a smear of liquid light, vanishing behind the jagged silhouettes of the Austrian mountains.

And in that moment of blazing light, she allows herself to make a wish. 

As if some deity, some god up there in the stars, hears her, a gentle creaking permeates the silence. Carmilla doesn't move, but she can feel herself tense, heart racing quicker- an entirely new situation. 

And then the scent of honeysuckle and sunshine and chocolate wreathes the air, and she relaxes, but her heart surges. It's abysmally pathetic, really, and Carmilla looks back up: the moon is hidden behind torn clouds. Only the stars glitter down, cold and impassive and brutal. 

"Hey."

Laura's voice is smooth, placating, but there's a skittering edge of uncertainty. There is metal in Carmilla's mouth, red and thick, and she feels like she's choking on it; her thoughts are strangely muddled, like the clouds over the moon have obscured her mind, too. 

"Why are you up here?" An edge creeps into Laura's voice; that's to be expected. Harshness- not tenderness... she doesn't _know_ Laura, not now. Not with a pulse. Not with mortality. 

Laura doesn't know. She _can't_ find out. What she did, being fully prepared to die in that light with the Blade scorching her hands, the act was heroic, sure. But she's not a hero. And if Laura knew- if she knew what has been stolen from her... 

She remembers a verse she read once, in a wizened book. Like a brand, that sentence flashes in fiery letters across her eyelids: _one of these nights this emptiness will swallow me whole._

And it damn well feels adjacent to the hollowness cackling _weakness_ in her chest. 

Carmilla wants to tell Laura, of course. She is still in love with her. She doubts that can or will change. She's the aftermath of a storm, she's splendid beauty. She's beautiful chaos. 

And she's tearing Carmilla apart. 

"This is my Mother's apartment, and likewise, I have every right to be here." As Carmilla's gaze skates over the shadowy solarium, she abruptly remembers the feeling of being more vulnerable to Laura than anyone, and from the slight exhale Laura breathes and the way her eyes cloud, she obviously remembers too. 

But Laura has never been her confidante, and under the pale wash of the myriad of stars, she looks ethereal, a ghost... And entirely out of reach. 

Laura turns to go, looking despairing and trying to mask her pain. The same pain paralleled in Carmilla. And just as she is framed in the doorway, something shifts in Carmilla's chest and a thin, keening voice cries out within her. 

_Wait._

She doesn't realize she's spoken aloud until Laura stops, a frail shadow limned in lamplight from within the apartment. "Why?"

Carmilla's eyes shift upward to the pale eye of the moon; watching, waiting, a silent sentinel. The moon has set on her and Laura's demise, and one day, it shall set on her death, too. 

That doesn't mean the sun can't rise on another beginning. 

"There's something I didn't tell you," she finds herself whispering. This solarium; a place of vulnerability. "After- the battle, and after the Lustig. I didn't feel it until we were in the mountains."

She looks confused; eyebrows drawn close, eyes flickering, silent. The stars dance across her skin, kissing the contours of her collarbones with misty light. "Feel what?" Her voice is guarded. 

She turns back to gaze at the foggy campus, eyes closed, trying to summon words that articulate the exact precision of mortality ingrained in her. She feels more than hears Laura come to stand a few feet away.

"The Blade of Hastur," she begins, (still fumbling, still faltering, and she doesn't feel like her usual collected and calm self) "was forged of the ash of the skeletons of Starspawn. My Mother knew that... and she believed that it would incinerate me, because I am a vampire and damned. I would be evil by those standards. What she didn't know is that the Blade of Hastur was a holy instrument. That 'Starspawn' is another word for fallen angels, and the metal of the Blade was infused with holiness, as the Starspawn's bones had touched heaven... so legend said. The Blade itself was so dangerous because it absorbed and vaporized evil and accordingly, the anglerfish's light was of demon orgin. That is why the Blade could absorb the light: because the light was a lesser evil." She pauses, seeing Laura's uncomprehending look. "Simply, the Blade was holy. It killed that which was not. That is why it could vanquish the Light."

She sees an inkling of understanding dawn in Laura's eyes, but not the truth. Not yet.

"The Blade would burn away that which was evil on contact. As a vampire, as an creature of evil myself, holding it was agonizing, but doable, with enough determination." She can see it, now, and remember how the sword _hurt._ The ocean which submerged it was like ice, choppy and sucking her into depthless darkness- until the Blade pulsed with light as she swam near, a coal of grim determination flaring in her heart. "I pried the sword from the underwater cliffs and returned here in time to-" She breaks off, teeth snapping together.

"To save me," Laura finishes. "That's what you were going to say- wasn't it?"

Carmilla looks away, back to the muted lights of the campus, multicolored sparks exploding in the distance from some petty border fight. "The Blade weakened my Mother so terribly because of the darkness in her heart, and she was left almost infantile when it sapped her strength. That was why you were able to conquer her with a rock. Nothing more, nothing less." Carmilla's chest tightens, eyes prickling. "When I drove the sword into Loophiformes, the souls that were trapped inside were set free to eternal rest... At last. The fragments of angel bone sent them to wherever they may go..."

"And where did the souls- Ell, the others that were devoured... where did they go?"

Carmilla flicks her eyes to Laura, studying her for a long quiet moment. Finally, she sighs. "Beyond," she says simply. 

"And you." Laura narrows her eyes. "How did you live if the Blade of Hastur was so devastating?'

And there it is. Carmilla takes a breath, feels the wild beat of her heart. She swears she can hear it. "The sword stripped away my immortality."

It feels like all the air has been sucked from the solarium. She can read the expressions as they flash over Laura's face: confusion, stunned shock, surprise, realization, and then a deep, aching sorrow. 

"Why it took just my immortality and yet I am still a vampire, though weakened and mortal, I do not know. Perhaps immortality is the root of the reason we are damned. Nothing should last forever. It's not the way of things. But I realized when I woke- in your dorm- I had a pulse. That was when I knew."

"Carmilla," she whispers, eyes terribly sad. "Why didn't you tell me then?" 

Carmilla is quiet, bemused, but then Laura makes a tiny noise and edges closer. 

"Is that why you've been so closed off?" Laura persists. "Because you're afraid of being mortal?"

Carmilla closes her eyes, feeling very, very weary. "Being a vampire was- is- all I _know_ , Laura. By social obligation, the Blade of Hastur destroyed the monster portion of the vampirism. Having that just taken away... you can't even imagine." She shudders a breath, feeling painfully raw and vulnerable. "And you kept pushing on that I was a hero, when I've lost my security of strength. I can't handle that."

Her eyes snap open as she feels two cool fingers press into her neck, her flushed skin, racing pulse. Laura quickly pulls them away, a look of marvel on her features. 

"You're mortal," she repeats wondrously, before her expression darkens, a shadow crossing her face. "Does Mattie know?"

Carmilla thinks of her confession, the surprise and disgust that had curled Mattie's voice as in the same breath she had assured Carmilla that she was fine. She'd cloaked the contempt in her eyes, disdain in her expression.... "Of course she knows. She's my sister."

Laura looks, too, at the moon, eyes glittering: the rings of color are colder and more distance than the stars.

She knows that the rift between them is now more uncrossable than ever. They can stand on either side and scream, but it will not change words that have been spat, nor thaw the ice that settles between them. No warmth will stave this off.

And she knows as Laura turns to go that if Laura steps out that door, it brings their relationship to a close, a close like the waning moon. Except in this, it will not rise again. 

Carmilla lets her go, silent as the moon, and as the door clicks shut on the night and _them_ , the last light of the sun disappears behind the mountains.


End file.
